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As Project Pie expands, founder James Markham says he wants to avoid what he calls "menu creep" -- when restaurants begin to offer too many items. He says to expect pizzas and salads and little else. Pictured is both -- the Pizza Salad: mixed greens, grilled chicken, gorgonzola, mozzarella, tomatoes and olive oil on pizza dough.

Original story: In April, the restaurant space next-door to Hopdoddy on Luther Lane in Dallas was an empty shell with wires hanging from the ceiling. But it’ll open soon as Project Pie, a pick-your-own-toppings pizza place that originated in Las Vegas.

Project Pie is a fast-casual pizza place that originated in Las Vegas.

Markham says “we do with pizza what Chipotle does with burritos”: Consumers pick their cheese, sauce, meats and veggies, or choose from a list of seven pizzas with recommended toppings. Regardless of the number of toppings, all pizzas cost $7.85. They take two minutes to bake, cooked at very high temps similar to Neapolitan-style pizzas. But not exactly: “Neapolitan pizza, which I’m a big fan of, is very soft and sometimes mushy,” he says. Project Pie’s pizzas are part New York-style, as he explains, and “are not going to fall apart.”

His comparison to Chipotle goes beyond the pick-your-own ingredients model, as he zeroed in on Dallas, specifically, because of its high number of Chipotle stores, he says.

Markham has experience with “the whole build-your-own pizza thing” as founder of similar places MOD pizza and Pieology.

He visited Dallas more than a handful of times before settling on two locations. “Everywhere you go, people are talking about the food scene in Dallas,” he says.